The key to success is consistency. Hard work and luck help too, but just knocking it out on a regular schedule is incredibly important. Web site promotion is no different; you have to tell people to visit it consistently and continually.

Now, saying, “I’m going to be consistent,” is quite different from actually doing it. Otherwise, everyone would keep their New Year’s resolutions instead of letting them fizzle out by March.

So it helps if you can attach your marketing reminder to something you give out all the time. That way you don’t have to always remember.

Here’s an example from a price label on a dress I recently bought. Notice how Calvin Klein stamps their website on every label. That’s an easy and consistent way for them to remind people they have a website.

Calvin Klein's web address is on every price tag

Look at the back of this price tag from REI. They’re using it to consistently remind people they have a member reward program.

REI reminds customers of its member program on every tag

Yes, you need to be consistent with your SEO and your online newsletter, but look around you and note the other missed opportunities to mention your organization and its website. Start with your website and see how it can promote itself. Your business cards? Outgoing voice mail? Car bumper? Attach it to something else that’s always being distributed that you might never have considered, and it will make your job that much easier.

Want more ideas? Our task-a-day web promotion checklist gives you many ideas you can use to promote your site.

Have ideas? Leave them in the comments below.

We spend all year coming up with advice and insight into how you can run a better website, hold a more effective online training program. Here are the top 12 most useful, entertaining and indispensable we covered over the last year.

(Make sure you don’t miss any of the good stuff coming up in 2012 – and yes, we’ve got a good year planed so far. Sign up for updates by RSS feed or by e-mail using the box to the right.)

Definitive Website Pre-Launch Checklist

Ready to launch a new site? Run through this before you flip the switch.

4 Risk Management Steps That Could Save You

Things go wrong with websites. Expect the unexpected.

Welcome to Our Website! (Except for You)

We know you’d never intentionally close your website to anyone, but without appropriate accessibility, that might be just what you’re doing.

Save Your Sanity AND Get the Logo You Love (Yes, You Can!)

You can get through an image rebranding without rehashing past mistakes or subjecting yourself to the pain of collaboration. Here’s how.

John Rochford Talks About Accessibility

John Rochford, Director of Technology at New England INDEX a project of UMass Medical School, is one of those people who takes accessibility seriously and makes websites better for everyone.

10 Ways to Be a Jackass in Online Discussions

Please apply the following rules to discussion boards, comments entries, and Facebook and Twitter postings if you wish to raise collective blood pressure.

Digesting All That Alphabet Soup

Here are a few tips on dealing with letter overload online.

20 Free Icon Sets for Non-Profits

The quickest shortcut to making your website look polished is to use icons. These pictures are nice and free.

Guest Post: Five Musts for Pictures That Pop

Morgan Ione Yeager shares some simple tricks to capture better images and using images online.

Reader Question: How Do I Get Feedback on My New Website?

A reader wants to know how to get honest feedback from her website visitors.

What Is the Coolest E-learning Video You Have Seen Online?

A few great examples.

Frankenspeak Contest with the Content Rules team

Share the words and phrases that you’d like to ban from marketing, sales, corporate communications, business schools, blogs and boardrooms, and you’ll be entered to win a copy of Content Rules, by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman.

The last couple weeks of the year is usually down time in most offices, distracted by holiday parties and run on skeleton crews. We have a productive idea for making the most out of these last nine days of 2011: do a little something to improve your search engine results. We wouldn’t dream of taking you from those festive glasses of bubbly, so we’ve come up with a task-a-day SEO checklist that won’t overwhelm you but that will leave your website performing better in the new year.

SEO Tweaks

1. Know and use heading tags.

These are widely misused but can help visitors as well as search engines navigate your site. The W3C says, "A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces." This Improve the Web article has a great break-down of how you might use the H1 tag, suitable for people who are less than acquainted with HTML mumbo jumbo.

2. Swap out your outdated bold tags.

Search engines like Google scan through the text on your page for keywords – the words that best represent what the page is about. One of the things they look for is words in bold, assuming that you bold things that are important.  Bolds should use <strong> tags, not outdated bold <b> tags. The Spunky Jones SEO Blog has a nice description of why strong is better than bold for SEO.

3. Submit your site to some directories.

Don’t assume everybody knows your site is there already. Submit it to directories that address what you do. Library Spot has links to some of the most popular nonprofit directories. Don’t forget to look for directories in other countries.

4. Bookmark it.

You might already Tweet the heck out of your site’s articles or pages, but don’t forget other social bookmarking sites. Search Engine Journal has a wicked long list of 125 social bookmarking sites.

5. Add a sitemap.

Search engines use sitemaps to quickly find each page on your site. Add one. If you have a big site, make sure it’s automatically updated.

6. Beef up your content.

Search engines like meaty text. Make sure your site has an adequate amount of text instead of a few floating headlines. If your pages should be longer, go ahead and beef them up. Just make sure to optimize for easy reading.

7. Plan your blog.

The best way to keep the search engines (and people) coming back is to blog. If you don’t have one yet, take a couple hours and plan out some ideas for a new blog you can launch in 2012. If you do have one, still sit down and plan out some ideas for 2012. You’ll appreciate being organized.

8. Update your content.

Everybody – humans and search engines alike – hate old content. Conduct a search-and-destroy mission on old dates and duplicate junk on your site. Our Definitive Website Pre-Launch Checklist is a handy tool for systematically updating.

9. Don’t lose yourself in your quest to be Number One.

Listen, everyone wants to be number one. While it helps to be the first listing in Google, but it’s not worth obsessing over. No matter what certain SEO charlatans promise, it’s impossible to guarantee being listed number one. Just concentrate on building a useful site that works well, and more people will use it.

Free SEO Analysis Contest

Contest time

Improve your search engine readiness with a free SEO analysis – a $600 value. If you win our drawing for a free analysis, we’ll comb through your site to tell you where you can improve your site for better performance on search engines.

How can you be entered to win? Just use the comments below to tell us about the next step you’re going to take to improve your search engine rankings (it’s OK to use one of the tips above – that’s why we wrote them!), and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win.

Deadline for entries is Jan. 23, 2012. We’ll pick one winner at random from all entries on Jan. 24, 2012 and will notify the winner via e-mail. You must leave your name and a correct e-mail address to qualify.

Then why do so many non-profiteers forget these same requirements when it comes to their own websites? If sites like Amazon or Dell or eBay were run the way many nonprofit websites are, they’d be out of business as soon as you can say “customer loyalty.”

Double-standards don’t work with online visitors. Whether someone is looking to spend $10 on a Mother’s Day gift or give you $10 for your next fundraising effort, they’re still looking for a positive experience. They’re looking for the right kind of feedback and ease of use. They want what we all expect when it comes to a welcoming and comfortable online experience.

Here are e-commerce some ideas you can apply to your website – no matter if you’re selling products or simply trying to gain an online following:

1. Easy to find contact information

Shoppers like to know that they’re dealing with real people at a real company when they’re handing over a check or credit card information. They want to have a phone number in case something goes wrong with shipping. They want the assurance that someone is there to help if they need it. Lack of contact information – or hard-to-find contact information – can erode trust and make people less likely to have a transaction with you, whether you’re accepting dues, donations or sign-ups for your next event.

Non-profit fix

Make sure your contact information is on every page of the website in an easy-to-see spot. Some of the most common spots are at the top of the page in the header or on the bottom of the page in the footer. Also make sure you provide multiple ways for people to reach you, including your physical address, a phone number, an e-mail address and a contact form. The more you can give adds to the level of trust.

2. Prompt and friendly feedback

As soon a shopper clicks that Submit button and authorizes money or personal information to transfer to someone else, they like a little assurance. Asking for feedback as soon as a person has acted on something (they call this “conversion” in the biz), also allows an e-commerce company to learn from the experience. Successful sites give chances for feedback immediately.

Non-profit fix

Ask for feedback immediately upon accepting some kind of information from your visitor – as soon as they sign up for a newsletter or send you a donation. You might create a quick survey asking for feedback on their experience. Ask them how easy it was for them to find what they were looking for, if they have ideas for improvement or if anything stood out as particularly good or bad about the process.

3. Clear Navigation

Take a look at some of the most popular shopping sites, and study their navigation. Even Amazon, which sells just about anything you can imagine, has a fairly simple and pared down navigation. Successful e-commerce sites make it easy to find items with well-named categories. Each category is also populated with items – no orphan categories allowed.

Non-profit fix

Think about what you want your visitors to accomplish when they come to your site, and shape your navigation accordingly. Remembering that people read from left to right, put the most important item on the farthest left navigation item. Make sure you don’t repeat items within navigation, and make sure each menu item leads somewhere. No “coming soon” pages!

4. Effective search

If a shopper is looking for barbeque tongs, they’ll often just type “barbeque tongs” into a search box to find them. It can be much easier than navigating through menu systems, especially if those are complex menu systems.

Non-profit fix

Make sure your content management system has a built-in search engine that delivers the most helpful search results. Your visitors should be able to enter keywords and find any applicable content that matches those keywords. It’s even better if you can guide your visitors through categorized searches, if you have a website with heavy content.

5. Detailed product information

Shoppers like to know what they’re buying. They like detailed shopping information, including prices, sizes, specifications and pictures. The more information available makes people more comfortable with parting with their money or personal information.

Non-profit fix

Every time you ask for a transaction from your visitors – money or signing a petition or any kind of interaction – provide them with as much information as possible. If you’re collecting money for the next youth trip, show pictures of the last trip and give an itinerary. If you’re trying to save endangered tigers, provide numbers of wild tigers and details of how any funds will be spent.

6. Clean Checkout Process

The last thing e-commerce sites want to stand between a shopper and their purchase is a clumsy checkout process. They do everything they can to make it smooth and involving as few steps as possible. The more steps between deciding to pay and actually paying equals more opportunities for abandoned shopping carts.

Non-profit fix

Make it easy to accept donations or sign-up forms. Once someone chooses to give you money, let them review their order, enter their billing information and check any additional fees on the same page. It also helps is your shopping cart or submission form are completely integrated into your website – it pays not to use a third-party service for this. If you must include other pages, make sure they’re short and match your site exactly.

7. Dependable Customer Service

The best shopping sites take pride in their customer service. They make it easy for customers to find contact information (see above) and also get in touch if they need more involved help. They also make privacy policies, return policies, shipping rates and FAQs easy to find from every page. Well served customers are happy customers, but there’s also a practical use for these good practices. The more information they provide to shoppers up front, the fewer questions they have to answer.

Non-profit fix

Copy these same pricniples, and you’ll have a happy constituency. Have a special address or system you can use for support, and present a phone number for people who prefer not to use technology. Create an FAQ that addresses the most commonly asked questions that come in. If you’re collecting personal information, make it clear what you’ll do with that information in a privacy policy.

8. Multiple Payment Options

The best sites are open to accepting your money any way you care to give it: credit card, check or PayPal. They’re also open to people who have cards other than Visa or MasterCard, by accepting AmEx and Discover.

Non-profit fix

If you’re accepting money, provide as many payment options as possible to help the money flow in. You can subscribe to a payment service that allows all the major credit cards, and also provide the option of sending in electronic or paper checks. PayPal is useful, because that opens up the choices your donors have for paying.

9. Prevalent Store Policies

The best online stores make it clear what their return and shipping policies are, and lay out their other store rules. Many simply put it in an FAQ or page with links to more detailed pages.

Non-profit fix

If you have terms and conditions or privacy policies, make it easy to find. Spell out exactly what you do with private information. Tell your visitors how you might be interacting with them (newsletters, Facebook, etc.). Informed visitors are much more likely to be happy about making transactions with you.

10. History and Credibility

One of the reasons so many people feel safe about buying from Amazon is that they know so much about them. They know the company’s history, they know Jeff Bezos is a nice guy and how he built it. They also know that history includes years testimonials from happy customers. That’s what sets a fly-by-night company from one people feel comfortable doing business with.

Non-profit fix

Tell your story. If you’ve been around for awhile, talk about your beginnings. Even if you’re new, you probably have individuals with a positive history who work for you – tell their history. Also demonstrate the good work you’ve done in the past. Show how you’ve used funds and the positive impact your organization has made. Tell your visitors why it makes sense for them to trust you, and they will.

Online calendars are an effective and affordable way to improve attendance at your events and generally promote what you do. Zip them up with calendars, directions and sign-up forms, and you’ll have even better attendance. Here are a few tips to help you create your best-ever listings.

Full Attendance at an Event

1. Add a map.

If your event is in a physical place, a map answers questions about location before they’re asked. Google Maps makes it dead easy to embed an interactive map into the event detail page, and makes it easy for your attendees to find driving directions. Use the Link feature on Google Maps to find the website code you need to include the map.

As a helpful addition, add any site-specific directions, such as, “Second door on the right,” or “Parking permitted in Lot A on Sundays.”

2. Link to sign-up forms.

It should be dead easy for registrants to sign up for your event as soon as they learn about it. Create direct links to your registration form with a call-to-action button: “Register now!” If you don’t accept online registration (and you should!), at least provide a downloadable signup form in PDF format with mailing directions.

3. Write a full listing.

Brevity has its merits, but it’s helpful to create as complete a listing as possible on the event page. Include goals of the events, dates and times, speaker information – as much information as you anticipate people asking.

4. Add pictures.

Include visual interest with pictures of the event location, speaker headshots or pictures of people enjoying previous similar events.

5. Let attendees add the event to their calendar.

Many online calendars (including Drupal) let you provide events in a downloadable format, such as ICAL or ICS. Attendees can then save the event to their Outlook or other calendar program. They’ll have a hard time forgetting your event if it’s on their own schedule.

[Image: Flickr user shinyai]

There’s a prejudice in the non-profit world against marketers. They’re often thought of as “slick” (not my word – a direct quote), slimy and very, very expensive.

The truth is, a marketer should look just like you, whether you’re slick or a slob. If you’ve decided you want a website, you’ve got to tap into your inner marketer to make it a success. Suppress your shudders when you hear words like “strategy” and “metrics” and “target audience” – instead learn what it means to be your own website marketer, and your site will be better.

You don’t have to enroll in classes at Sloan to apply a few elementary marketing skills (although it can’t hurt, if you have the time and budget). Bone up on these few areas, and you’ll be in a much better position to be using your website as a tool that works for you rather than an annoying necessity.

1. SEO

Have a basic understanding of how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) works. The good news is as long as you apply a little common sense, your search engine standing will improve. Write in natural language, make sure you use sensible page titles and include the words that best describe what you do, otherwise known as “keywords.”

This is a great article on understanding the basics of SEO.

2. Social Media Basics

Even if you’re not on board with compulsive Twitter updates, realize that social media is a useful tool for reaching a target audience. Spend some time looking for the social networks that your audience uses. Participate often, and give your fans and followers ample opportunities to communicate with you.

Check out this list for how to get started with social networking.

3. Copywriting

Think about how much time you spend reading when you’re on a website (pretty much all of it, right), and then think about how much thought you give to the copy. With most non-profits, there’s a discord.

Learn about writing for the web, and pepper your site with calls to action. The care you take will pay off when it comes to communicating a clear message.

Copyblogger gives loads of good advice with content-based marketing.

Pace Yourself

Marketing is a job that never ends. The best way to accomplish it is to nibble away bit by bit on a regular basis. Make a schedule for yourself, and devote yourself regularly to different marketing tasks.

If want a little help, try out 52 Website Marketing and Promotion Tips, which gives you one easy thing to do per week.

It’s easy to think in extremes with websites. Your website might be looking a little tired, and you might think, “Time for an overhaul!” Often all you need is a little freshening up, and you’ll notice a big payoff. As long as you’re reasonably happy with your content and you don’t have any technical problems, you can execute a few tweaks that are far cheaper than an overhaul, and that pay off big time.

Contra Costa Midrasha just went through what I’d classify as a “refresh” rather than a “relaunch.” CCM is a program for Jewish high school kids in Walnut Creek, Calif., and every year they start a big registration push to recruit more students.They were already planning a “Put Yourself in the Picture” direct mail campaign and had designed a postcard.

It seemed like the perfect time to breathe new life into the website while using it as the hub for registrations, donations and news about events. After a few discussions with Devra Aarons, the program’s executive director, we came up with a plan of attack that would be budget-friendly but still achieve her goals of getting new recruits and collecting information. We decided to also align the site with the “Put Yourself in the Picture” campaign.

Here’s the plan:

• Design a new header to match the campaign.
• Add punchy noticeable buttons to encourage donations and registrations.
• Create motion and interest through an interactive slide show.
• Use an expanded online registration tool.
• Promote their new social media campaign.
• Use analytics accounts to track usage.

New header

The old website header was designed to match a brochure. It was eye-catching, but this was probably the most impactful way to update the look of the site. We used an existing postcard for the upcoming campaign and extended the movie metaphor with CCM’s color palette and some layered textures. Here’s the old banner:

And the new banner:

Donate and Register buttons

For a long time, Devra knew she wanted to add call-to-action buttons to encourage donations and registrations. There was a blank area above the banner that was the perfect spot. We created a couple buttons that matched the new header and that stood out.

Slideshow

The biggest wow factor on the page comes from the slideshow. It cycles through a series of pictures with text, and each image links to a corresponding page. Since Devra wanted to ramp up registrations, we made them all lead – for now – to the registration page.

Registration tool

Devra decided to largely scrap the paper registration and put it all online. The form was long, to be sure, but we streamlined as much as possible and used fieldsets to group like information with like. We also used collapsible fields, which open with a click and reveal more information. This is helpful for information that might not be relevant for everyone. The end result for the user is a friendly flow of information that’s a little easier on the eyes.

The payoff here was clear and nearly immediate. Registrations started coming in right away, and the feedback was good: “I got a lovely e-mail from a parent saying how user friendly our registration form was!” Devra said.

Promote social media

CCM just started using Twitter, so we added this and a link to their Facebook Group to the homepage, where it’s easy to click through.

Analytics

Finally, Devra set up accounts on Google Analytics and Clicky, both helpful tools to show the who, what, where and when of people visiting the site. After making these kinds of changes, tracking usage becomes a helpful benchmarking tool to know what decisions are resonating and identifying possible issues. The data that comes in over the following weeks and months will help plan for the future, as needs and responses change through the course of the program.

Here’s the whole site, but make sure you visit so you can see it all in action.

You’d never throw a party without sending invitations. Who wants to sit alone with four dozen spinach triangles and a couple cases of beer? (If you just answered, “I do!” then you might want to get out a little.)

That’s effectively what you’re doing if you’re like one of the many people I talk who aim to have an “interactive” website but don’t kick-start the festivities. They expect people to start participating, yet they don’t tell anyone what’s happening or make it a destination worth visiting.

It helps to think of your website as a venue where the party never ends. An always open house. How do you do this? By applying some of the same principles you would to any bash you host.

1. Send out invites.

If you know how to reach them online, you can invite them through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, listservs or however you normally chat with them. Are your partygoers the type to read a paper invite over an electronic one? Put it in the mail. The point is to invite them. Check out 18 Ways To Promote Your Website for ideas.

2. Keep inviting.

Remember, you website isn’t the one-time event of the year. It’s the ongoing event of the decade. Inform people they’re welcome to drop by any time. And then keep inviting them. People forget, have dentist appointments, get interrupted, so you need to keep the invites coming.

3. Plan something fun.

You don’t have to whack a piñata every time you throw a shindig, but people minimally expect snacks, drinks and good music. Why would they come to your website if there weren’t some kind of payoff? Make it worth their while, and they’ll keep coming.

4. Take pictures.

You know how weddings nowadays have disposable cameras in the middle of the tables? It’s because everybody likes to see themselves and their buddies participating. That transfers to your website too, whether it’s actual photos of the people you know or representations of them.

5. Make it pretty.

Picking up the dirty socks from the sofa and doing the dishes translates into fixing broken pictures and links and correcting typos. Read our Spring Cleaning guide so you can get everything sparkling before the party starts.

6. Plan for amounts.

In the event-planning world, you need to know who’s attending your party so you rent a big enough space, have enough canapés and staff appropriately. If you have the kind of website that’s likely to receive a surge in traffic, make sure you’re expecting it. If you aren’t, people might receive a message that the website isn’t available. Up your hosting account, talk to your webmaster about planning for what happens if 100 people try to click the same thing at once.

Honestly, who feels like delving into those voice mails and uncompleted projects this early in the week? Fill your cup of coffee and watch these five great little movies that will help polish your tech education.

What Is Drupal? from help.asu.edu on Vimeo.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics for Non-Profit Organizations (NPO) from Firstgiving on Vimeo.

Demo Usability Test by Steve Krug from Larmon VanWinkle on Vimeo.

History of the Internet from Melih Bilgil on Vimeo.

Why Video Content Is Important from WebDesign.com on Vimeo.

The good people at JFFixler Group know that the entry point to your organization is your website. That’s why they asked me to contribute an article to their blog about the 7 Best Homepage Updates you can do. They’re quick, they’re easy, they pay off. Check it out:

7 Best Website Updates on JFFixler Group blog.